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David McElroy

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Freedom of the press is for everyone, not just those recognized by feds

By David McElroy · September 19, 2013

Clare-Hollingworths-press-007

Do journalists have more rights than you do? Do you even know for sure what makes someone a journalist? And does the U.S. government have any business defining who’s a journalist and who’s not?

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has just inserted language into a bill that would limit who gets privileges as a journalist under the First Amendment. It would declare that those who get paid to report on the news are journalists, but those who don’t get paid for it aren’t journalists. She thinks that being a journalist is a special privilege (video). Under her rules, bloggers and “citizen journalists” aren’t journalists at all. This is wrong for journalism. It’s wrong for the law. But most importantly, it’s wrong for the average American.

How did we get to this point? Is Feinstein just an evil fascist, as Matt Drudge suggested about her on this issue? I don’t think so. She’s wrong, but it helps to understand what the underlying issues are.

In this country, we have freedom of the press because it’s mentioned in the First Amendment to the Constitution. (I’m not even going to get into the fact that we should have the right even without it being mentioned, because the government is given no power to taken that freedom away. I’m ignoring that because dealing with what the Constitution originally meant has nothing to do with how the law currently works here.) Because the First Amendment specifically says that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…,” the media in this country have traditionally enjoyed a wide degree of freedom.

For a long time, journalists have argued that if they are required to reveal their sources of information — in court or in congressional hearings, for instance — it would have an impact on freedom of the press. If they could be forced to share such information, fewer people would give them information. So some states have enacted what are called “shield laws,” which shield journalists from having to reveal their sources. In this way, it gives media people a legal right that the rest of us don’t have.

Now journalists and some in Congress want a national shield law, which would protect reporters from having to reveal sources to courts or politicians. Here’s where it gets slippery.

Feinstein says that she’s willing to let “legitimate” journalists have this additional protection, but she’s not willing to go along with it if the same rights apply to writers, producers or bloggers who aren’t part of the traditional media. She thinks that if you’re not being paid for what you do, you shouldn’t have the same rights. And she’s successfully gotten that idea inserted into the Senate bill.

I’m opposed to the bill, but I see two layers of potential “badness” to it.

First, why should people working for corporate news operations have rights that aren’t also allowed for those who are solo operations or who are volunteers with activist groups? I can’t see any legal or moral justification for that. But the members of the journalist groups who want the shield law passed all work for big newspaper and television companies that pay them for their work, so this law would suit their purposes.

They have no reason to fight for the writers and producers who aren’t among their ranks. But why should the law treat those groups differently? If a person gets information about wrongdoing at his local government and writes an article about it on his blog, shouldn’t he be entitled to the same protection as the people from CNN and the Washington Post?

Second, I’m not sure that I can support shield laws in the first place. I like the idea of a journalist not having to reveal his sources — and I admire a reporter who’s willing to go to jail to protect his sources — but I don’t see why a paid journalist should have more rights than anyone else has.

Let’s say that you’re not a journalist or writer of any sort. But let’s say that you uncovered information about government wrongdoing and you decided that the public needed to see it. So you took steps to make sure that copies of the information got into the hands of other people in your area. Let’s say that the local government found out who released the information and took you to court — for theft of the information or whatever charge a prosecutor could cook up. Is it right that a paid journalist could refuse to testify and walk away, but you could be forced to testify or you’d be sent to jail?

Freedom of the press doesn’t just apply to those who are paid reporters. It also applies to bloggers and writers and independent producers of all sorts. But it also applies to everyone else. The freedom belongs to all of us.

If anybody can refuse to tell where he got information, we all should be able to. Otherwise, we’ve reached the point of de facto press licensing by government fiat.

I’m opposed to Feinstein’s plan to exclude bloggers, but I’m also against any law that suggests that the rest of us don’t have exactly the same rights that any reporter does.

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At sunset Tuesday evening, the cloud cover over me At sunset Tuesday evening, the cloud cover over me was solidly gray and black, but one tiny break in the clouds appeared just for a few minutes to show a little bit of sunset’s colorful light. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

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